Experiences in Social Dreaming

W. Gordon Lawrence

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN:
  9780367324384
• eBook ISBN:
  9780429913396
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Social Dreaming is the name given to a method of working with dreams that are shared and associated within a gathering of people, coming together for this purpose. In the first chapter, he outlines some ideas on this phenomenon. Here follows a wide-ranging collection of essays on the experiences of various practitioners, either personal or what they have found when taking this phenomenon into the wider social arena, such as the church, schools, consultancy and working with children.

Chapter One

The social dreaming phenomenon

W. Gordon Lawrence

The purposes of this chapter are (1) to describe the phenomenon of social dreaming and (2) to consider the relevant theories of dreaming in the light of this experience. I shall approach these through presenting working hypotheses. A working hypothesis is a sketch of the emergent reality which illumines it that reality. If the sketch is found wanting, another working hypothesis can be substituted that better fits the reality that is always in the process of becoming.

The chapter is structured in three parts:

• The phenomenon of the social dreaming matrix
• Towards a new way of understanding dreams: the epistemic theory
• Social dreaming @ work.

The phenomenon of the social dreaming matrix

1. The dream is always enlarging the space of the possible. Through the dream we are brought into the tension between the finite (that which we know) and the infinite (that which is beyond our ken). In the context of social dreaming, I am persuaded that the terms “infinite” and “finite” be used instead of the terms “conscious” and “the unconscious”. The infinite is a mental space that contains all that has ever been thought and is capable of being thought. This space is not “outside” us but is contained in our inner worlds. All thinking begins from no-thought, from an absence, which we experience in our inner world. We make the thought present from first recognizing that it is not there.

Harry Stack Sullivan wrote about the “unattended” when referring to the unconscious. This seems right to me, because the unconscious does not become a thing, is not reified. It is a process.

The first working hypothesis is that dreams, dreaming, and dream work is always inducting us to the tension between the finite and the infinite.

2. Social dreaming takes place in a matrix. People come together to share their dreams. Someone will give an account of a dream at the beginning of a session. Others follow. There is a flow to the dream in that one dreamer intuitively fits his or her dream into the previous one. The taker will offer a comment on the possible links and connections between the dreams. The term “taker” is used to describe the persons who are convening the matrix. Their role is to further the work of the matrix, which is stated in the primary task: to associate to one’s own and other participants’ dreams that are made available to the matrix so as to make links and find connections.

The seating of the matrix is designed to facilitate this work. The chairs are arranged in clusters of five to seven, depending on numbers. All the chairs are linked but are ordered in a pattern, and they all face into the centre of the room. Together the clusters of chairs represent a star-like shape, a bit like a snowflake when seen through a microscope. In a matrix of thirty or so participants, there will be about four to six clusters of chairs. The takers sit anywhere in the matrix.

3. Dreaming is respected as being a representation of the truth of the images and proto-thinking that is the infinite, which is in the minds of the participants. A dream will often be a fragment but, nevertheless, is seen as a potential synthesis. Social dreaming is a method of arriving at the meaning of the dreams through dream work.

The key tool is “free association”. Free association was proposed by Sigmund Freud in The Interpretation of Dreams (1900a), though it was not his original idea. The takers’ work is basically to associate to the dreams in order to find connections among them. In this, the takers are working at the finite of the dream and the emotional experience of the infinite from which dreams arise. In this way, they, in a sense, model how to work with dreams in a matrix.

4. I have used the term “matrix” to describe the configuration of participants. This term was first proposed when social dreaming existed only in the mind, in imagination. To the best of my knowledge, such a configuration had never been consciously convened before Patricia Daniel and myself did so. It was thought that if it was to be called a “social dreaming group”, it would be in the area where what had been learned about groups would obtrude into the work of the matrix, which is to transact dreams and to be working at the multiple dreams-in-association. In short, the fantasy was that dreams would speak with dreams. Although we each dream individually, participants seem to intuit that their dream is not a personal possession but belongs to the larger whole matrix, which is always in a process of discovery, or of meaning becoming a version of the truth.

In the first social dreaming matrix in 1982 (conducted in the Tavistock Institute) the hypothesis that it would be possible to dream socially was quickly established. Not only was dreaming over and above the individual participants, so to speak, but it also evoked new dimensions that had rarely been possible in the classic, dyadic situation. Social dreaming ushered us into a new experience of dreaming. Why was this so?

The term “matrix” had been intuitively chosen. It proved to be correct. A matrix is different from a group. A matrix is derived from the word for a “uterus” or “womb”. It is a place from which something is bred, grows, and develops. Matrix describes the space from which everything that exists in our Universe, indeed the cosmos, has its origins. Matrix exists before mankind developed groups. And it may well be that group is a defence against the experience of the formlessness of matrix. The social dreaming matrix, purposely convened in the here-and-now, is a reflection of the primordial matrix of humanity.

What can be said about the matrix in the context of social dreaming can be offered as a second working hypothesis: a matrix is a different “container” for receiving dreams, and so the “contained” of the dream alters. The “content” of the dream becomes different from that delivered in other contexts.

5. A social dreaming matrix evokes a different array, or suite, of dreams. Transference and countertransference would be part of the domain of a “group”. It was felt intuitively that such issues would interfere with the work of a matrix, just as would basic assumption behaviour and the like. In a social dreaming matrix, transference and countertransference issues are not addressed directly in the here-andnow of the matrix. If the participants have faith in the dream and dreaming, such issues will be voiced in the dream. We have found that if they are addressed directly they rob the dream of these emotional experiences. Once they are indicated in a dream, the takers will make some comment. For instance, from our work in companies we know that such issues will be present. Once feelings on authority figures are verbalized in the dream, they can be associated to and developed. The transference is to the dream, not to the dreamer or the takers.

Participants in a group are concerned, at some level, about being part of the universe of meaning, and the group spends most of its life tussling about the meaning and non-meaning of being in the group. In a social dreaming matrix, because of its work of free association, what emerges is a multi-verse of meaning. A matrix can tolerate this, and the members do not think they are going mad (psychotic), because such a multi-verse makes sense for them. This is consistent with dream life.

The third working hypothesis is: the dream arises from the matrix of emotional experience that exists prior to the formation of group.

6. Grotstein (1979) makes a useful distinction between the dreamer who dreams the dream and the dreamer who understands the dream. In a social dreaming matrix, there are as many dreamers-who-understand-the-dream as there are participants. It tends to be that the taker is the first to free associate, but it can happen that participants will be associating before the takers. In the end, it is the dreamer-who-dreams-the-dream who takes on the function of understanding in the sense of making meaning. The social dreaming matrix is a socio-democratic endeavour.

7. When in 1982 in the first social dreaming matrix it became apparent that the act of dreaming was enlarged in the matrix, I could not formulate the experience.

I now see dreaming quite differently. Here, I follow the philosopher Schopenhauer, who posed the question: “May not our whole life be a dream or more exactly is there sure criterion of the distinction between dream and reality?” Miguel de Unamuno gave an answer to the question when he wrote that the poets of all ages always have been dismayed at the passing of life. He goes on to make the point that whereas Calderón de la Barka simply said that “life is a dream”, it is to Shakespeare that we owe the insight that “we are such stuff as dreams are made on”. Shakespeare “makes ourselves a dream, a dream that dreams” (Unamuno, 1954, p. 39).

8. The social dreaming matrix has caused me to reflect on the content of the dream, and what it is achieving. I believe that dreaming in a social dreaming matrix inducts us to the world of the socio-centric. Bion makes a very useful distinction between the world of the egocentric and that of the socio-centric. This distinction is between narcissism and social-ism. In the introduction to Experiences in Groups (1961) he says that as a psychoanalyst one can look at groups via two vertices. The first is that of the pair and all the minutiae of transferential detail between the consultant and the participant. This is the oedipal situation. It is also, I think, to do with what takes place within the individual. But, second, Bion writes that one can also look at the group in terms of what he calls sphinx. This is related to problems of knowledge and scientific method—that is, how one arrives at knowledge. Very firmly, a social dreaming matrix takes us into thinking about the other and frees us from being gagged and bound in the world of the “I”.

So I have a fourth working hypothesis: the experience of a social dreaming matrix places participants in the domain of sphinx—that is, in the realm of knowledge, scientific method, and truth searching.

In this hypothesis I am reflecting something of the social character of dreams. Paul Lippmann. in a brilliant article on the nature of dreams (1998), makes the hypothesis that the nuances and styles of social influence can be found in dreams. He refers to Erich Fromm, Erik Erikson, and Montague Ullman and suggests that dreams contribute to social life and character.

The varied experiences in dreams may be thought of as continuously exploring, portraying, rehearsing, commenting upon, critizing, adding to, varying and improvising on aspects of the socially shared characteristics of a people… in the deepest privacy of dreaming, the culture’s ways are being developed, tested, explored, and reinforced. [Lippmann, 1998, pp. 203–204]

Towards new ways of understanding dreams

1. I begin with a dream on social dreaming, which occurred during the night of 13 September 1999.

In the dream, two of us are rebuilding an ancient, fortified tower on the top of a low, craggy mountain, which commands a view of a valley. My colleague, who is a co-founder of Symbiont Ventures, is the builder. He is studying a report that has come from the expert on historical monuments. In the report it says that we have to build an extra floor between the first two stories and the final one, which is a battlement. The extra floor looks like a pudding, or a soufflé. It is like the bulbous towers that one finds in a Russian Orthodox church, but not so regular. Then the topmost fortifications will be superimposed.

As happens in many dreams, this building work is done instantaneously. My colleague is querying this opinion of the expert, but I am insisting that we follow his advice. During this we have found the visor of William Wallace. We are not sure if it is empty or not. It is not, we find, and we scoop the head out.

Later in the dream I descend to the valley. There are two perfect Georgian houses, each a mirror of the other from a distance. When one gets closer, I find that one is made of stressed concrete, mimicking in every detail the features of the original house. I find that the concrete house has been built by trade unionists as a conference centre only a few years ago. In the dream I go down the long drive that leads from these two houses. I hear voices. Recognizing that apparently one woman talks in the same way as both my mother and my wife, I go towards them/her across some wild moor, which is reached through a gate. The woman is talking to the others in her group of the opinion of the historical monuments’ expert. She says, in effect, that both opinions are right: to have an extra floor and not to have one. I meet with them, and the dream ends abruptly and I do not have the answer I crave.

Associating afterwards to the dream. There is something around about my willingness to listen to experts. William Wallace was a great Scottish leader who challenged the king of England. Do I want to be a leader against the Central Europeans? Why are we in the dream scooping out his head from his visor? To get at his brains! (William, of course, is one of my first names.) I have been digging out the brains of people for years, from books.

The stressed-concrete Georgian house built by trade unionists? Who built which house—Jung or Freud? Assume that the trade unionists are those who follow the rules of their masters but at the same time are often in conflict. Are they psychoanalysts?

The dream illustrates vividly the dilemma I face in pursuing social dreaming. Do I enter into understanding it without memory and desire? Does the matrix interpose itself between dream and reality? In terms of my dream, the restored tower on top of the crag is social dreaming, which has a long past but a short history. The soufflé-like structure—is that the social dreaming matrix?

Can I allow myself to try to understand it with negative capability—that is, being in mysteries and doubts without irritably reaching after reason? Can I experience social dreaming as it is? Like all of us, I have been listening to the voices of the dead and, on occasion, imbuing their words with tongues of fire.

2. Erich Fromm wrote in The Forgotten Language (1951) that there were three approaches to the understanding of dreams. First, the Freudian view postulates that all dreams are expressions of the irrational and asocial nature of human beings. Second, Jung’s view is that all dreams are a revelation of unconscious wisdom, a wisdom that transcends the individual. Third, there is the view that dreams express mental activity of whatever kind and are expressions both of our irrational strivings as well as our reason and morality; dreams express both the best and the worst in us as human beings, for they cannot be controlled or managed.

3. To go back to my dream of September 1999, for something like twenty years I have been hewing out the brains of previous writers on dreams and dreaming. Of the three views, I empathize most with that of Jung. At the same time, I do not know which of the smaller eighteenth-century houses, representing Jung and Freud, is the facsimile or not. But one was built by trade unionists. I think that they are those people who know about dreams and, by extrapolation, believe they know about social dreaming. When I took the first social dreaming matrix in Israel I was assured by one psychoanalyst before the matrix began that there was nothing new in this, that she had been doing it for years

4. I have sympathy with Fromm’s third way of interpreting, which says that dreams are an expression of mental activity. It is possible to cut through the various “schools” of interpretation if we ask ourselves from what or where do dreams arise.

5. Trying to understand the conscious mind and disentangling it from what we know of brain is notoriously difficult. The brain is, like the body, objective, exposed, external, and public. Mind, on the other hand, is a subjective entity, is private, internal, and hidden. To identify the nature of consciousness depends on the existence of that same consciousness.

The brain registers everything that happens to the individual. This can be called the “movie-in-the-brain” (Damasio, 1999b, p. 77). The movie is a metaphor for the integrated and unified composites of diverse sensory images that can be experienced. We generate a sense of self in relation to this movie. The self is nested in the movie. But we are never fully consciously attentive to this movie. Much of it will be unattended to, and this is the content of dream. It is almost as if dream comes from the movie seen from the rear of the screen.

6. I follow an epistemic theory of dreams first propounded by Wilfred Bion. This takes us much further than Freud, Melanie Klein, or Jung. The theory is based on Bion’s view that psychoanalysis is about the evolving process that make for mind: “the mind is seen to develop on the basis of the acquisition of knowledge, knowledge about itself and knowledge about its objects, internal and external” (Meltzer, 1984, p. 68).

Bion outlined his theory of thinking/dreaming through three functions: alpha functions, alpha-type elements, and beta-type elements. To be sure, Bion (1967b) makes clea...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• CONTENTS
• ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
• CONTRIBUTORS
• INTRODUCTION
• CHAPTER ONE The social dreaming phenomenon
• CHAPTER TWO Social dreaming: report on the workshops held in Mauriburg, Raissa, and Clarice Town
• CHAPTER THREE Dreaming the future
• CHAPTER FOUR Not two and not one
• CHAPTER FIVE The science, spirit, chaos, and order of social dreaming
• CHAPTER SIX The discovery of social dreaming
• CHAPTER SEVEN Relationship and relatedness between the elementary school as a system and its violent parts
• CHAPTER EIGHT Childreamatrix: dreaming with preschool children— or, bootlegging dreams into the school years
• CHAPTER NINE Deep calls unto deep: can we experience the transcendent infinite?
• CHAPTER TEN Sliding houses in the Promised Land: unstable reality worked through dreams
• CHAPTER ELEVEN Social dreaming and the senior managers’ programme
• CHAPTER TWELVE Dream intelligence: tapping conscious and non-attended sources of intelligence in organizations
• CHAPTER THIRTEEN Paul Lippman interview
• CHAPTER FOURTEEN The confusion of dreams between selves and the other: non-linear continuities in the social dreaming experience
• CHAPTER FIFTEEN Theatre of dreams: social dreaming as ritual/yoga/literature machine
• CHAPTER SIXTEEN Social dreaming: a paradox accepted (a psychoanalyst’s condensed thoughts on social dreaming)
• CHAPTER SEVENTEEN Associations and reflections on social dreaming
• CHAPTER EIGHTEEN Social dreaming: dreams in search of a dreamer
• CHAPTER NINETEEN Some thoughts on social dreaming
• REFERENCES